You have to figure Friday evenings as prime time for teens, who have any number of ways to while away the end of the week. Any program that has them back in a classroom when their peers are out on the town must be something special.

A dozen or so youths from Malvern and Jane-Finch kick off their weekends on post-secondary campuses downtown, reflecting on their lives, as participants in Lost Lyrics, a program that uses arts (theatre, dance, poetry, film and music) to reach students who struggle in the education system and can wind up labeled as having behavioural problems.

The organization was founded in 2006 by Amanda Parris and Natasha Daniels, university students who shared “feelings of isolation and disconnect from the mainstream curriculum” and devised the project — initially funded by bank overdrafts each ran up — to provide education through art.

Students develop critical analysis and tangible strategies for social change through seven programs, which enjoy support from various sources, including The Laidlaw Foundation, the Toronto Arts Council and Toronto Community Foundation.

The initiative starts with kids 11 to 15 in the Blueprint After-School Program, who meet in their neighbourhoods to explore themes, such as sexuality, art, hood politics, hip-hop activism, the politics of drugs and the roots of beauty ideals.

Then there’s the Artistic Development Weekend Program, which allows them to express themselves though rap, singing, recording, photography, film, plays, poetry and visual arts.

Blueprint graduates move on to the Original Griots Internship Program, which gathered on a recent Friday evening at the Ontario College of Art and Design.

“We often meet on university campuses so the students can get a sense of ownership of those spaces,” says Parris, 27, who is doing her Masters in sociology and education at The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.

This segment is geared to 15- to 19-year-olds, who face big decisions, such as first jobs and post-secondary choices and prepare them for internships to support the program’s younger kids.

An equal mix of young men and young women, the Griots sat in a circle and chatted about issues they’d encountered since the last meeting, from conflicts with teachers and peers, to vulnerabilities around social awkwardness and course selections.

The advice and encouragement from their peers, or the one or two older facilitators, is blunt and simple: “Don’t waste energy with hater!”

It’s not all talk-therapy; the teens are coached through to develop skills, such as budgeting and resumé building.

The group will work through the spring on drafting a personal manifesto, described as “a declaration of your core values and beliefs, what you stand for and how you intend to live your life.”

Lester B. Pearson student Ashley Abdul, 15, who’s been attached to Lost Lyrics for about five years, says she considers the initiative a family, not a program.

“You can be yourself and not care what anyone has to say,” she explains. “No one judges you, and everyone is supportive and is there to help you. You can express anything you feel and not feel ashamed about it. It is always filled with positive energy, because it teaches kids and teens how to take out anger or frustration they have in an effective way.

“Lost Lyrics has taught me many things, from bettering myself, to bettering the community, to bettering the world,” she adds. “It teaches us about things such as shade-ism; about leaders like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.; the things school history books forget about: self-development, and what it means to be feminine and masculine.”

In the year she’s been in Lost Lyrics, Halima Mohamed, 15, says she has discovered “a classroom outside of school.”

“In that classroom I feel free, not only because I’m doing what I love, which is singing, writing and acting, but because I feel the wisdom and love the world lacks. I want to rule the world, or my world at least, and, with Lost Lyrics, I feel I can. I feel like I matter — not that I didn’t before, but because it feels nice knowing someone truly cares and wants to see you be your best.”